Dorf on Law: The Appearance of Impropriety and Partiality

Second Circuit Judges Jose Cabranes, John Walker, and Barrington Parker, Jr. removed Judge Shira Scheindlin from the NYPD stop and frisk case, stayed her remedial order, and kept the appeal for themselves.  I was stunned and disturbed by the ruling.  It came on a sua sponte motion, not as a request by the City.  The three judges are all `Yalies'.  Maybe it's a group-think problem.  With Bill DeBlasio at the helm in New York I expect that the case will never be decided by the three.  As a critic of Raymond Kelly's aggressive patrol practices I expect the new mayor will resolve the case by a consent order.  - GWC
Dorf on Law: The Appearance of Impropriety and Partiality:
by Anil Kalhan // Drexel Law School

Last week—a day late for “Mischief Night,” but right in time for Halloween—a motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, consisting of three long serving and distinguished Circuit Judges, José A. Cabranes, John M. Walker, Jr., and Barrington D. Parker, Jr., issued what must surely rank among the most bizarre stay orders that court has ever issued. The stay was (rather belatedly) sought by the City of New York in an appeal from an August decision by U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin—herself a long serving, distinguished, and highly respected judge in the Southern District of New York—holding that the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” practices involve impermissible racial profiling in violation of the Constitution. Only days before the City’s stay motion was filed in late September, the Second Circuit, in an order signed by Judge Richard Wesley, had denied the City’s previous (and also belated) motion for an expedited appeal and briefing schedule, which somewhat undermined the City’s claims to urgency and irreparable harm in its stay motion.

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